


Five Last Kisses (or To All Things An Ending)

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Implied Relationships, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sooner or later, all things must come to an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Softly Into The Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written September 2008 for someone's "five kisses" challenge.

The city sensors tell him where she is - sitting on one of the outermost piers of the city, bathing in cold moonlight.

John frowns to himself and ponders taking a ‘jumper out to see her, lazy as it would be. As Keller would say, the walk would do him good.

It takes longer than it once did to walk so far, through halls and corridors that are hushed but not silent. Like New York, Atlantis never sleeps. Its complement of a thousand personnel from a dozen worlds of the Milky Way and Pegasus continue to give the Earth Oversight Committee organisational indigestion, and John revels in it.

Here and there, people pass him, some of them greeting him, others merely watching him with awed eyes - General John Sheppard, First Son of the Ancestors, Harbinger, Wraith-Destroyer, Pain-In-The-Ass to military commanders everywhere.

But to the woman who sits on the chilly pier, he’s just John.

“Don’t tell me you’re not cold out here,” he says as he eases himself down beside her. Joints over-worked in his youth and prime ache a little, but he learned to operate past the pain a long time ago.

He loves the smile that tips her lips - wide and serene - as she looks over at him and holds out her hand. “I do not notice it so much anymore.”

Fingers intertwine, skin pressing against skin, and John slides his arm across her back and draws her in against him. “Gave Cassie the slip?”

“She is an excellent doctor,” Teyla says after a while, her voice reflective. “But I did not wish to be fussed over. Dying is a part of living, too.”

“You’re not dead yet,” he murmurs and brushes his lips across the cold skin of her shoulder - she chills so easily now - before releasing her hand to tug the slipped coat shoulder back up over her. The motion doesn’t hide the sudden tension in her shoulder, and he watches the moonlight off her profile for a long moment. “What?”

“I would like to be buried in the way of my people, John.”

Now he’s the cold one.

He looks away, out to the edge of the endless sea. “The Ring ceremony?”

“Yes.” Her fingers find his again. “I survived the Wraith, it is my right.” No-one’s going to argue that with her - even though the Wraith are little more than stories now. “My memories and thought patterns are stored in Rodney’s hologram program for recall. And Jinto and Torran know how my things are to be distributed among the children.”

Last rites, last rituals, an ending to the story of them that began the day John Sheppard stepped forward in an Athosian tent.

The doctors murmur about advanced cellular aging, the scientists debate the ‘natural selection’ of races with a lengthy youth that swiftly fades into age, the anthropologists talk about social norms and the Pegasus perspective on death.

All John knows is that Teyla’s losing a battle that neither of them can fight.

“You don’t like talking about this,” she says gently, and her eyes are too clear, too piercing on his face.

Years of familiarity allow him to say, just, “No.”

Years of familiarity allow her to understand why.

“You cannot stop it, John.”

“I know.” And he hates his helplessness.

“Can you accept it?”

“Hey, I’m not about to drown myself just because you’re gone!”

Her mouth curves. “Good. I would not have you do so.”

John looks at her a long moment then leans in towards her.

Lips touch, move, meld - familiar as the morning sunlight, easy as loading a gun. He knows that when he cups her throat with his hand, she’ll tilt her mouth up to him. She knows that when he flicks his tongue against hers, he’s inviting her to close her teeth - lightly - around his lip.

And familiarity breeds only sweetness.

John’s forgotten how long ago it was that he stopped seeing the parts of her and saw only the whole - Teyla Emmagan, a friend and a team-mate and an ally and the woman he loved; so much person in such a small package. It’s been a long time between start and finish, even if it took them some time to find their stride.

He doesn’t regret a moment.

Well, maybe a couple of moments. But mostly, John wouldn’t change a thing. He had his scars to heal; she had her people to placate. He doesn’t resent the year she lived with Kanaan - it opened his eyes to what he hadn’t been willing to admit until then. She doesn’t cast up to him his brother’s words on discovering John Sheppard was in love with a single mother of apparently mixed-race background.

The wide mouth quirks again as they draw back, and her eyes slant up at him in laughter. “What are you thinking?”

He shifts a little and lets out a long stream of condensation in his let-out breath. “I think I’m a bit old for sitting out on moonlit piers all night.”

“Time to sleep?”

“Time for bed, anyway.”

Laughter rings out. “So you are too old for sitting out in the moonlight, but not too old to take me to bed?”

“I’m a guy,” he says as they help each other up, no longer as limber as they once were. “There’s no such thing as too old.”

They walk back together, beneath the pale moonlight, with the wash of waves around them, and the lights of the city guiding them home.

 


	2. Wraithkiss

She knows the ship has been breached long before their footsteps echo through the craft’s cold corridors. Their minds are like the bullets they wield, hard and focused, coming to a rounded blunt, and she brushes lightly across them, then lets them pass.

If they were any other, she would fight them; her life has been hard-won, she would not suffer to die without meaning.

The chair in which she sits moulds to her form, clinging and comfortable as she waits for the intrusion.

When the doors are breached, she is expecting them.

Four sharp shots ring out and four points of pain become bleeding agony.

They circle her chair, wasps whose stings have already bitten into her flesh; and she knows they do not see who she is, only what she is - the last Queen.

When did deception become truth? When did she cross the line from one ancestry to the other? She no longer knows - if she ever did. But even this mask had a purpose, and only by becoming the enemy was she able to bring them down.

Alone of any Queen that has ever lived or died in Pegasus, she hates what she has become.

Death is an ending, a relief that she has longed for, knowing that this body will last a thousand human lifetimes, enduring through generations as long as it is fed. With no more Wraith to feed upon - not even her crew, she dreaded the coming of the hunger.

Now, at least, she need dread no more.

Slowly, because moving is such an effort of will, she lifts one hand and grasps at the chain that has sat around her neck. Even as life and will drains from her, she manages to yank it from her throat, her gaze fixed on the one man who approaches her, wild terror and terrible hope in his eyes.

The dogtags glitter on their chain in the pool of light, and John looks at her face and sees, not a Wraith Queen, but a woman.

“Teyla?”

Holding up her hand is too much effort, her hand sinks to the arm of the chair. Fingers tilt her head back, hands press against her wounds. But she knows how close death is, and she would not gainsay it.

Beyond John, beyond Ronon, beyond Rodney, in the shadows that grow longer with each second, faces drift into her sight - familiar, long dead, much missed. Her mother’s smile glitters with pride as her father’s eyes crease with tenderness. Charin is there, as are Kanaan and Torin and Fielle and Pretda - the friends she ran with in her youth. And to one side, Elizabeth lifts a hand in greeting, as Carson’s broad grin creases his face, and Kate smiles and waits.

“Teyla, you can hold on...”

“I do not want to.” Her breath bubbles. “This is a fitting end for me.”

“Fitting...” His voice breaks, she can see the guilt in his eyes and closes hers.

The chamber is empty but for the two of them, his hands still on her face and waist, his eyes searching hers for signs of recovery.

 _I am the last Wraith Queen, John,_ she says, letting her fingers linger on his cheek. _The others are all destroyed._

 _You should have said something._ He grabs at her hands. _Teyla, hold on. Your son needs you._

 _He has you and Rodney and Ronon_ , she says. _This is how it should end._

 _No,_ he tells her, and something more than grief gleams in his eyes, so close, so angry at her death. _This wasn’t how it was supposed to end!_

Teyla pulls her hands free and takes his jaw lightly between her palms. A spark leaps amidst grief, and John leans in until their lips meet.

Fire leaps from flesh to flesh, ferocious and consuming, yet Teyla is drowning, without breath, the shadows drawing ever closer.

 _Perhaps not,_ she murmurs against his mouth. _But this is all we may have of it._

He seizes her mouth, as though will could keep her by him when she can feel her life seeping away.

 _You can’t go,_ he says, and there’s a desperation to his words. _You can’t go..._

 _John._ The shadows are nearly on them, and she will not take him down with her. He has a life to live in Atlantis - her son to bring up, his people to lead.

Her eyelids are heavy, but she lifts them enough to meet his gaze, manages a smile, or something that might be like it, and then lets the darkness come.

Surcease.

 


	3. A Good Ally

John wakes to the familiar beep of the infirmary machines cataloguing his state of health.

He doesn’t feel very healthy at all. His muscles ache in ways he didn’t know they could, there’s a numbness in his shoulder, and his left hand feels icy-cold.

And he has the feeling that something’s wrong, something’s missing.

Lifting his hands, John stares at them, remembering the circular shape and smooth feel of the retrovirus delivery system as they handled dozens of cylinders into the middle of the field. He remembers the feel of the dart controls under his hand, disconcertingly organic; the musky, damp scent of the dart’s insides as he climbed in and the cover closed over him.

He remembers the sudden shouts from the others, the whine of new darts overhead, firing, firing firing, the shuddering jolt of the crash as his dart was hit and fell.

He remembers...

“John?” Elizabeth’s entering the infirmary, and it only takes one glance at her reddened eyes to tell John what he already knows. Behind her, Ronon and Rodney follow, quieted and grief-stricken.

John’s hands close into fists, and the twist of pain in his left hand is the IV needle in his flesh. “She died, didn’t she?”

Looks are exchanged, a wordless deathknell.

The doc appears at the door, takes in the scene, and steps back, realising this isn’t a time for her to intrude.

“We don’t know, John,” says Elizabeth.

Rodney clears his throat. “We tracked the dart as far as the hive ship... After that...”

After that, once they discovered her - as they would - she’d be a meal. The serum would take about five hours to disperse through the hiveship, and then another forty-eight hours before it would take effect... It might take years for the virus to be dispersed through the Wraith, but Teyla had been the one who said that the Pegasus peoples could be patient.

As he stares at his hands, John can feel her hands beneath his arms as she hauled him from the wreckage, guiding him away from the downed dart, into the treeline and safety.

“How long was I out?” His internal timesense is all screwed up, but he knows it’s been more than a few hours since the attack.

Ronon answers, rough and low. “Forty-three hours.”

“The hive jumped shortly after the tracking device failed.” Rodney’s trying to sound upbeat. “They probably didn’t realise what the device did. And even if they did, it would be too late.”

“For the Wraith,” John snapped, “or Teyla?” He knows the anger’s unjustified towards Rodney; but he can’t bring himself to aim it where it’s deserved - at himself for failing to carry out the mission in the first place, at Teyla for taking it up when he failed.

“Teyla knows our bases and allies,” Elizabeth says. “If she makes it out, she knows where to go.” She’s trying to be helpful; John’s not in the mood for helpfulness.

He remembers her hands touching his face, resting light against his cheeks, running down his vest, checking for injuries as John leaned back against the tree and concentrated on breathing and the way the world came in multiples.

 _The rescue teams are coming._

 _I’m fine,_ he insisted, watching the repeat Teylas shimmer and shift through the air beyond him.

They solidified into a single image whose hands cupped his jaw, her mouth brushing across his with tenderness and purpose.

Footsteps crashed through the undergrowth, and she rose, splitting into multiple images wielding a multiplicity of weapons in her hand, which were put away as several Lornes arrived. _He is injured. Possibly concussion. Can you get him to safety?_

 _Yeah, sure. Wait - where are you going?_

 _There is something I must do._

Her fingers brushed his cheek. _You have been a good ally, John. Thank you._

He felt her mouth on his again, fleeting and bitter.

Then she was gone.

 


	4. Hello And Goodbye

The choice weighs heavy on him during the walk from the Athosian encampment to the Stargate, but when they arrive in the Atlantis gateroom, the decision is made.

He collars Ronon to harass the new recruits that evening, and catches the querying look on the Satedan’s face - and the dawning understanding that can’t seem to decide if it should end in a smile or a frown. John ignores it and heads off to dinner.

And when evening falls, John goes into the gym and waits for her at the window, thinking twice, three times, four times about this, but sticking with his original plan.

 _The Atriennians insist on alliances through marriage, not trade. Jinto had said. So Teyla would marry one of their princes if this goes ahead._

He’s not going to fight it. Her loyalty goes to her people before Atlantis and her team, and John wouldn’t take that from her, even if he could. If her people need an alliance through marriage, Teyla will give it to them.

She pauses at the entrance, surprised to see him there. “John.”

“I figured I could do with some of that inner calm,” he says. “So I sent Ronon to deal with the marines.”

Teyla doesn’t look like she’s inclined to believe it. “You are really going to meditate with me?”

She knows him far too well. “Not really,” John admits, rising and crossing over to her. His footsteps don’t waver, his legs don’t give way, and he knows his voice is steady. “But I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of Ronon.”

“A fool?” She asks as he stops in front of her and her eyes widen as he bends his head towards her, but she doesn’t move away, although she could. “John...”

It’s not graceful. He never did manage to pull off suave and charming. But he doesn’t think too badly of his kissing skills.

Given Teyla’s response, John figures she doesn’t think too badly of them either.

She doesn’t ask questions, so he doesn’t have to tell her lies. It’s hello and goodbye in one - because her people have plans for her future, and they don’t include John.

He thought they’d have time - and they did. They let attraction build to friendship, and friendship solidify to care. He trusts her with his life - to guard his six and hold her ground; and he trusts her with his heart - with the emotions he doesn’t trust himself not to somehow wreck.

He thought they’d have _more_ time.

They don’t.

So John will make time, if Teyla will let him.

She doesn’t stop him.

 


	5. the weight of things unsaid

Silence has never had such weight between them.

It always sat lightly, a comfort, not a burden.

Now, she walks beside him and wishes he would say something - approval or complaint, disagreement or joke, the weather or what has always stood between them unsaid.

She does not know what he thinks of her decision, although she knows the flows and currents of the talk around Atlantis.

 _...such a waste...all she’s good for...wonder why they left it so late...who’s going to be the father..._

Rodney and Ronon have made their feelings clear enough. Ronon blends anger and resentment into sullen silence at her going, and Rodney is at a loss beyond the questioning of why she would want to do this.

It is not that she wants this for herself, but that she owes it to her people and those of her lineage who have gone before.

John has been accepting and calm, but with a shell about him, as though he has retreated and what she speaks to is merely a dream.

She and her team-mates tread through the forest on their way to the encampment. The things she is taking with her are packed in a suitcase, all that she is taking with her from Atlantis - all that she is allowed to bring with her from Atlantis.

At the edge of the forest, they stop. The Athosian Council decreed it best that the severance begin beyond the camp and this is the designated edge.

Ronon silently hands over the suitcase, then envelops her in a hug that says all the things his voice will not. She hugs him tightly, then steps back.

Rodney is uncomfortable in embrace at first, not knowing where to put his hands, or how hard to squeeze. Then he relaxes, his shoulders sinking down. “You’ll be back, won’t you?”

Her laugh chokes on something too close to a sob.

And then she faces John, who doesn’t seem to wish for the contact that the other two chose, but stands apart from her and bows his head.

Disappointment threatens, is swallowed. This is what must be between them, and it is best for all involved. The child she will bear for her people’s sake will know him as a mentor of the heart and a hero of his people and hers. That will be enough.

It must be enough.

She touches her head to his, the tickle of his forelock against her hair, accepting his friendship and putting away what could not be. There is a relief in it, the comfort of a boundary-line, the knowledge that this far they may go and no farther.

Teyla lifts her head to look him in the eye and say farewell.

But John is not finished.

His lips descend on hers, a brief touch of open mouth to closed lips. The rough of his beard-shadow catches against her skin as her breath catches in her throat, and Teyla half opens her mouth on something like a moan. Then it is over, too brief and bittersweet, and the pant of his breath washes over her lips and cheek, and his nose brushes against her skin as he turns away, a secret caress.

This once, she sees his gaze naked - acceptance and regret that is mirrored in her heart.

And the promise that whatever man fathers her child, she is still counted as one of his people.

“Take care,” John says, and his voice is soft and low and rough.

“Yes,” she answers, and knows that control of her emotions elude her. “You, also.”

Her gaze takes in the three of them - so precious to her - then she reaches for the handle of the suitcase, and begins the journey back to her people.

She does not turn around, but she knows they watch her go.


End file.
